No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 207 



A recent book opens with the sentence: "The whole business of 

 agriculture is founded upon the soil. For the soil the farmer pays 

 rent, and upon his skill in making use of its inherent capacities 

 depends' the return he gets for his crops." While this is a striking 

 sentence and contains much truth it can hardly be said to contain 

 the whole truth. The soil does not make apples sour or sweet, corn 

 yellow or white. Out of the same soil may grow wheat containing 

 gluten found nowhere else except in rye, or a colfee plant producing 

 in its bean caft'ein, or the nettle containing formic acid. Upon the 

 production of these substances the soil has no material influence. 

 The cause of these differences, whatever it may be, is to be found 

 in a microscopic cell of the seed and is transmitted with fidelity 

 from generation to generation. 



This much being granted, it may be asserted that- out of mother 

 earth come all things. A well known writer on nature, not a nature 

 fakir, has used in quite a different connection the phrase, "the 

 divine soil/' but it may be used in this connection with the utmost 

 reverence. What a wonderful thing the soil is. Not only are the 

 millions fed out of its bosom, but it is at once the delight and 

 dos{,iair of the investigator. It has as many moods as the most 

 fickle goddess. The experimentor carries on a series of elaborate 

 investigations from which he feels justified in reaching certain con- 

 clusions. Out of a caution borne of experience, he repeats his ex- 

 periments auodier season, only to secure quite different results. 

 The soil was in a different mood. With the first season's results 

 the investigator is delighted. After a second season he is plunged 

 into despair. It is perhaps not out of place to remark that some 

 investigators prefer to announce their first season's results and 

 then proceed to conciuer new fields. They can thus remain in a 

 perpetual heaven of delight. 



The guests at a dinner party were recently discussing the oc- 

 currence of trailing arbutus. Some one asked why it was that 

 none could be found in the immediate vicinity of the village in 

 which they lived, while it could be found in abundance two or three 

 miles away. Some one suggested that all the arbutus near the 

 village had been destroyed in previous j^ears by ardent collectors. 

 This expanation seemed satisfactory to all parties concerned. It 

 may, however, have been due to a desire not to mix science with 

 social small talk. However, this may be, the fact is that trailing 

 arbutus fails to occur in the immediate vicinity of State College 

 for the same reason that chestnut trees, rhododendrons and blue- 

 berries do not occur there. None of these plants have ever grown 

 (here naturally. They are not lime loving but lime avoiding 

 plants. The soil about State College is of a limestone formation, 

 while the soil on which trailing arbutus, rhododendrons and chest- 

 nut trees grow is produced by the breaking down of shales and 

 sandstones. The purpose of relating this anecdote is to emphasize 

 the well known fact that soils do differ in their crop producing 

 power, that while one soil may be well adapted to one crop it may 

 be illy adapted to another. There are tobacco soils, and potato 

 soils, and cabbage soils, and celery soils, and corn soils, and wheat 

 soils, and clover soils, and grass lands. The soil best adapted to 

 red clover is not best adapted to alsike clover. That there is a 



